The present disclosure relates to an image forming apparatus.
Image forming apparatuses, typified by digital multifunction peripherals, read an image of an original document by using an image reading unit, and then emit light to a photoreceptor in an image forming unit based on the read image to form an electrostatic latent image on the photoreceptor. Then, a charged developer, including toner and other components, is applied onto the formed electrostatic latent image to make it into a visible image that is in turn transferred onto a sheet of paper and fixed. The sheet with the image fixed thereon is discharged outside the image forming apparatus.
There are well-known techniques to reduce operational errors of users who manipulate the image forming apparatus.
A typical image forming apparatus includes an image reading unit, an image forming unit that reads a document on the image reading unit and forms an image of the document on recording paper, and a feeding unit that feeds the document to the image reading unit, and further includes a document transporting unit that is openable/closable with respect to the image reading unit, a document presence/absence detecting unit that detects whether a document is present in the document transporting unit, an open/close detecting unit that detects the opening and closing of the document transporting unit, and a closed-state duration time storage device that records the time elapsed since a close signal has been generated by the open/close detecting unit until the current time. The typical image forming apparatus controls the image forming unit not to operate, even if a user depresses a button to start forming an image, when the document presence/absence detecting unit detects the absence of the document and the closed-state duration time of the document transporting unit stored in the close-state duration time storage device is equal to or exceeds a predetermined period of time.
Another typical image forming apparatus includes a feed-slot selecting unit that selects a copying operation to be performed after transfer paper is inserted into a manual feed slot for manual copying, a detecting unit that detects the presence or absence of the transfer paper in the manual feed slot, and a detecting unit that detects the paper size of the manual feed slot. The typical image forming apparatus can select between a mode allowing copying operation when the detecting unit for detecting the presence or absence of the transfer paper detects the presence of the transfer paper, and a mode allowing copying operation when the feed-slot selecting unit selects the manual feed slot irrespective of the output from the detecting unit. In addition, even if the mode allowing copying operation when the feed-slot selecting unit selects the manual feed slot irrespective of the output from the detecting unit is selected, the image forming apparatus can disable copying operation except when the paper size of the manual feed slot is the minimum.